Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday May 16, 2018 @06:00PM
from the new-and-shiny dept.

OnePlus has launched their newest flagship smartphone today at an event in London. The OnePlus 6, as it is called, features a 6.28-inch 2280x1080 display with 19:9 aspect ratio and notch, Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with up to 8GB of RAM, 16- and 20-megapixel rear-facing cameras, 3,330mAh battery, 3.5mm headphone jack, and Android 8.1 Oreo running out of the box with support for Android P coming soon. Strangely, the phone features a glass build construction but no support for wireless charging. OnePlus claims the glass back will be better for transmitting radio waves, but it's likely included in preparation for the OnePlus 6T, which will likely launch several months later and include wireless charging. PhoneDog reports: Around on the back of the OnePlus 6 is a vertically stacked dual rear camera setup that's now in the center of the phone for symmetry. There's a 16MP camera with Sony IMX 519 sensor, f/1.7 aperture, and support for optical image stabilization and electronic image stabilization, as well as a 20MP camera with Sony IMD 376K sensor and f/1.7 aperture. Also included are portrait mode and slow-motion 480fps video capture features.

The body of the OnePlus 6 is made of Gorilla Glass 5, which OnePlus says will be better for transmitting radio waves. Rounding out the OP6's spec list is a 16MP front-facing camera, NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C, an alert slider, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the security side of things, there's a rear fingerprint reader and face unlock, and when it comes to wireless capabilities, the OnePlus 6 supports 40 global LTE bands as well as 4x4 MIMO for speeds up to 1Gbps. The OnePlus 6 will be available on May 22 with the following prices: 6GB/64GB: $529;
8GB/128GB: $579; 8GB/256GB: $629.

another goliath chunk of plastic that won't fit in your pocket, once upon a time it was all about the miniturisation, seems we've passed that now, pretty soon they'll be trying to convince us we need a full atx form factor for our mobile devices.... end of the smart phone is upon us ladies and gents.

The actual size of the phone is no larger than the Oneplus 5 or 5t; it just has a larger screen because bezels are being replaced by the notch.

I mean, I'm not buying from Oneplus 6 anyway, but that's because the company already got caught preloading spyware into phones, not because the phone's too big or some other nonsense.

It may have a dreaded Notch and spyware, but this is a huge advancement in technology. Having a headphone jack is unheard of in this day and age. I would like to credit OnePlus for their technical genius; I hope the research they developed in creating this phone will help guide other less sophisticated phone makers to be able to duplicate this magnificent feet.

no worse than the others is hardly disproof of the point. I was on the samsung s8, I've sold it and gone back to the s6 due to the size difference and no real functionality difference, and I'm never buying another phone longer than 140mm including case, which rules out every so called flagship aka brick on the market atm.

Agreed. Notches are dumb. I almost wonder if Apple is trolling Android by making a dumb design to see how many Android makers are dumb enough to copy it. I would rather lose the space to the right and left of the notch then to have a ugly notch in the middle. I can't say I would never buy a notched phone but that's my primary reason for not upgrading yet.

Apple and Essential brought their notches to the market within six months of each other. Since a phone usually is in development for a year or more I think it'd be fair to assume they came up with this obvious feature independently of each other. In any case, like with most things, it really doesn't matter who was first, it's here.

Personally I see it as a minor thing, I don't care whether my next phone have one. I'm more interested to know for how long the manufacturer provides SW updates and on this point

Technically "disabling it" doesn't make the screen shorter, it just keeps the status bar background black around the notch. You don't get your full statusbar back, but yeah it's a stupid thing to complain about either way.

I would be China does care less, but I guarantee the Chinese government has more to fear being discovered monitoring US citizens than the US government does. China would face some sort of international backlash if they did anything nefarious with the data. The US government would face a week of headlines and then be forgotten.

What's the world coming to when you have to mention right up front, that your phone has a headphone jack? Thanks, Apple. (And wipe that smirk off your face, Samsung, because it was a mere oversight that the headline doesn't also mention that it's not explosive.)

Under ideal conditions, it's good. "Ideal conditions" meaning direct support for MP4/Ogg/whatever at both ends. Unfortunately that is extremely rare, and thus most headsets fall back to AptX transcoding or SBC, which can be acceptable at high bitrates, but falls apart extremely quickly at lower bitrates.

As long as there any phones out there that do not have a glass back I will never buy a phone with a glass back. Why on Earth would you make the most fragile material known to man an integral part of your case? Glass is a stupid idea for a back, only marginally better is metal because they're always polished to the point where you can't hold the device. We need to get back to reasonable materials on phones. a good textured back in a premium plastic style would avoid the need for a case on most of these phones, would look better, and be more durable.

There's only one reason manufacturers use glass backs on their phones, and that's to try to get you to buy more phones when you can't hold on to your existing one because it's so slippery you drop it and inevitably shatter the back of the phone.

I ended up putting a vinyl "skin" on the back of my pixel a) to make it less slippery and b) hopefully minimize glass cracking and finally c) everyone at my office has one, they're impossible to tell apart.

There's only one reason manufacturers use glass backs on their phones, and that's to try to get you to buy more phones when you can't hold on to your existing one because it's so slippery you drop it and inevitably shatter the back of the phone.

Another reason is that the main purpose of "smart"phones is to show off your shiny slab. So by making both sides equally shiny and slabby, the utility is instantly doubled. Besides, what's the point of all those hardware specs if you can't rice it up with Gentoo?

But because they're so shiny and slippery, nobody ever ever ever sees the back of a phone every single phone has a case on it. I looked around the office the other day, I couldn't find a single phone that was not in a case. Couple of years ago that wasn't true, in fact the majority of phones were not in cases, what actually happened is as phones have gotten thinner they've actually gotten thicker because they now need cases. Prior to this fad phones could actually be held in your hand without jumping out on

I hear that. I got my first glass-backed phone and also ended up getting my first case, because it was clearly going to get scratched up at best or, at worst, super prone to shattering on impacts. It also helped me realize why phone makers are so fixated on making slim phones: they're planning for a case to double its size.

And that's just it, a couple of years ago phones were actually thinner. No not the phone itself, that's thinner now, but a couple of years ago there were no cases on most phones so the end result is that the new phones are actually thicker because of the case. But you can't go without a case anymore because the new phones are slippery almost like a bar of soap.

They know that everyone uses a case. They make it look good in adverts and reviews, knowing that you will fit a case to protect it.

The lack of wireless charging is a deal breaker for me. I had it, lost it when I switched to a Pixel XL and now really miss it. I used to be able to throw it into the car dock, have it start charging and launch Android Auto automatically. Really great for commuting.

This is fixable. I upgraded from a Nexus 5 to a Pixel 2 XL and also missed the wireless charging.

Go buy a case an a wireless charging receiver. The receiver gets sandwiched between the case and the phone so you don't have to affix it using the double sided tape. Works great in my wireless desktop and car chargers.

Technically, I can't think of a better material than polycarbonate for a phone body. But many people are ready to pay more when the material looks expensive. The usual comment is "I don't pay $800 for a plastic phone".

A few years ago the most expensive phones on the market had some variety of plastic on the back of them. Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or the Galaxy S5 those phones had premium plastic backs and not a single person ever complained that they looked cheap. In fact there was a lot of comments when they finally got rid of those about how ridiculous it was that they were replacing them with metal and glass.

Plastic can look cheap if you want it to, but then so can glass and metal. It's all about how yo

The Note4 was rather well received but it did have a metal frame. The same cannot be said of the S5, which the majority considered ugly (band-aid look...).Back then, Samsung was derided for its use of "cheap plastic". There are a few vocal proponents of plastic, like myself, but the truth is that the newer glass backed Samsungs were well received, there are the "good looking Samsungs".Any yeah, they are often (but not always) tucked inside the worst looking cases imaginable, but go figure... At least they l

True, it's so annoying.
I used to have the oneplus one and the back was a textured sandstone which was not slippery and meant I could go around with only a screen protector. I now have the oneplus 5 and have to have a case on the back (which totally negates all the thin design) and a front screen protector.
Making phones more and more 'premium' with glass etc just means we will cheapen them with cases. Shame.

Did you even read my post? I didn't advocate for a metal back, in fact I stated that it was only marginally better than glass (i.e. still not good)I suggested going back to plastic. Plastic is better in every single way. It transmits wireless signals better than glass, it's more durable, it can easily be molded to have an actual texture to it, and with the right texture will look more premium, and won't require a case.

Using glass or metal as the back for a phone is completely inexcusable.

The black on an OLED display is BLACK, when I use my OLED in bed at night, it's vastly superior to IPS.

Some are bothered by signature "IPS glow". I happen not to notice / care. For myself light sensor auto adjusting backlight brightness for environment makes display no better or worse in day vs night. At least I can see the damn screen outside when the sun is shining.

More power to you wanting one I suppose? I'd never go back. Doubly so when using a VR headset attachment.

Have Rift HMD (OLED) ordered day 1. Not impressed with god rays nor dirty sheens that follow you wherever you look in low light/contrast scenes. This only gets worse with use as elements drift further out of calibration. More than anything

Except in direct sunlight or at an angle at which point it reflects a certain greenish hue even when the screen is off. So much for the deep blacks.

when I use my OLED in bed at night, it's vastly superior to IPS.

At night your brightness would be on basically minimum at which point a good LCD will get pretty much completely black as well. LCDs are better than people give them credit for. Far too much hype over OLEDs which are far from perfect.

I don't care if my music and video library is encrypted. You can keep all the important data on your phone or not use an SD card if that's important to you. But having a cheaply upgradeable storage option is a huge feature that I wouldn't want to go without.

Data on MicroSD is not secured by phone password. The sooner it goes extinct the better.

Factually incorrect, try again later.

3300 mAh battery is an insult. Having said that, most people crack the screen before the battery is due for upgrade

Since when is 3300 mAh an "insult"? It's at the top of the range of flagship phones from all major competitors. It's way more than iPhone X that costs at least twice as much and is about the same size.

Myth batteries outlast devices is an amusing one given market for battery replacement services and aftermarket batteries.

It has AMOLED display, not LCD. IPS (in-plane switching) is a screen technology for liquid-crystal displays (LCDs).

This is common knowledge. I want an IPS (LCD) display.

OLED displays are worse than LCD in the areas of reliability and daylight visibility. OLED isn'

OK, wireless technology is so far ahead of data costs it is not even funny!What is the point of advertising a speed that if attained would exhaust my monthly data allocation in mere seconds (or a couple of minutes at best)? Until there is such a thing as truly "unlimited" data plans (that also do not cost an arm and a leg) which allow me to use these speed somehow (perhaps as a hotspot?), show me stuff I can use. Yes the headphone jack is nice, put in a good battery (with an appropriate chipset/screen combi

I own a OnePlus, and I doubt my next phone will be OnePlus. They have had a number of security breaches lately, which eroded some of my trust.

The stunt they pulled with the code made to send the contents of the clipboard to a third party is just too much. Their excuse that it was only code intended for the Chinese market is terrible -- if this is what they do to bend to Chinese surveillance, how can anyone trust them? Is there any evidence that other vendors are equally uncaring about human rights?

Anyway, I'm hoping that the next Pixel device is reasonably affordable. Otherwise it may be OnePlus plus a custom ROM and hope that the modem chip isn't backdoored.

(Apart from that the OnePlus phones that I've had have been pretty bad for actual phone calls. I can barely hear the other side, and they get echo from my side. However, phone calls are way down on my priority list for a cell "phone")

I'm currently an iphone user but I've been paying a lot of attention to Android's releases because Apple's recent behaviours have been making me consider jumping ship.

But there are certain features on my iphone that I consider invaluable, the most notable one being Siri.

For example, I can ask siri to give me a weather report while I'm getting ready in the morning, and it will give me a useful summary. Or when I'm travelling on my bike, I can tap my headphones and ask for the time, or tell it "play all" and

I tend to break jacks (charging, headphone etc.) within a couple of months, so I switched to Bluetooth headphone a long time ago, and when wireless charging came out I jumped on that as well. No jacks to break.